


Oh, Hold Me Like a Baby

by Adenil



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Incredible Hulk (2008)
Genre: Hulkeye - Freeform, M/M, POV Second Person, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-03
Updated: 2014-11-03
Packaged: 2018-02-23 23:00:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2558930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adenil/pseuds/Adenil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It’s four a.m., but insomnia is your best friend so you find yourself wandering the darkened corridors of the Avengers Tower. You’ve got bandages on your fingers and they fray as you brush the pad of your thumb against the wall and try not to let the whispers get to you.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oh, Hold Me Like a Baby

**Author's Note:**

> Everything about this is wrong. I usually hate song fics, second person, and present tense. But hot damn this was therapeutic to write.

_You come from far away_  
 _With pictures in your eyes_  
 _Of coffeeshops and morning streets_  
 _In the blue and silent sunrise_  
 _But night is the cathedral_  
 _Where we recognized the sign_  
 _We strangers know each other now  
_ _As part of the whole design_

It’s four a.m., but insomnia is your best friend so you find yourself wandering the darkened corridors of the Avengers Tower. You’ve got bandages on your fingers and they fray as you brush the pad of your thumb against the wall and try not to let the whispers get to you.

He’s still in your head.

Maybe he always will be.

Maybe that’s okay.

But it isn’t.

The clock rolls over another minute, two, three, and you’re in the commons even though the light is on. You don’t want to talk to anyone. You don’t want to see another living breathing soul because that means you might hurt them, might have their blood on your hands. But something draws you in. Like a moth to flame. You watch that tiny, curly-haired scientist breathe in steam and you wonder if he knows what it’s like.

You say, “Hey,” and the mug in his hands shatters when he jumps.

It’s four-oh-five and he had no friend but the tiny mug of hot leaves, and you made him break that, too. He still smiles and says, “A cup can be replaced. People are harder.”

You think you understand that.

*

 _Oh, hold me like a baby_  
 _That will not fall asleep_  
 _Curl me up inside you  
_ _And let me hear you through the heat_

 

Six weeks have passed and Bruce Banner disappears into the ether. You don’t know why but it’s your job to find him.

And you do.

He’s skinny and one of the lenses in his glasses is cracked, a huge spidering mess that’s sharp, like a galaxy of broken dreams. He still smiles when you smile and invites you in. You step through the beads hanging over the door and suddenly the quiver on your back and the bow in your hands feel heavy. Weighted. Painful. Dark. And you’re crying.

You say, “I thought you understood.”

He says, “I do.”

He rubs your back as you wet his shirt with saltwater and memories and in the morning you wake up with a splitting headache and he’s gone.

*

 _You are the jester of this courtyard_  
 _With a smile like a girl's_  
 _Distracted by the women_  
 _With the dimples and the curls_  
 _By the pretty and the mischievous_  
 _By the timid and the blessed_  
 _By the blowing skirts of ladies  
_ _Who promise to gather you to their breast_

You laugh like its your job, and maybe it is. Eight weeks, four months, a year, it doesn’t matter because you can grin and laugh and play your little tricks that even have the shrinks fooled.

You’ve learned to juggle anything, even the expensive cocktail drinks at Tony’s latest party. It’s got the crowd looking on in awe and that’s good, because at least they aren’t looking at the bullet hole in the sleeve of your suit jacket, or the bandages on your fingertips. They can’t see the space in your chest where your heart is supposed to be.

You laugh.

You smile.

That slick, slimy voice in your head coos at you, soft and gentle, and so you throw higher and play tricks on yourself. Force yourself to be distracted.

Suddenly the crowd’s no longer looking, and when you turn to see why the glasses fall to the ground. They shatter. Sharpened, violent slivers of glass splay out across the floor.

“It’s okay,” Bruce says. “They can be replaced.”

*

 _Oh, hold me like a baby_  
 _That will not fall asleep_  
 _Curl me up inside you  
_ _And let me hear you through the heat_

 

It’s terrible but the voice is quiet for the first time in three-hundred and seventy-five days.

You hold him close and he doesn’t make you smile. He lets you cry. He lets you fall to pieces and doesn’t try to pick you back up and cram you back together. He lets you be broken, and maybe that’s what you needed.

When he speaks it pushes that other voice out. It’s not silent, no, never silent, but quieter. A soft breeze that you can live with.

You hold onto him like you might fly away. You grab at every inch of him because he said he understood, and you need that right now.

You don’t realize you aren’t breathing.

You’re so tense that you snap when he touches you back, that you shatter under the weight of his _knowing_. That you disintegrate like torn paper, set out to flutter in the wind but he catches you. He pulls you close. And you can breathe again for just a moment.

*

 _You have hands of raining water_  
 _And that earring in your ear_  
 _The wisdom on your face_  
 _Denies the number of your years_  
 _With the fingers of the potter_  
 _And the laughing tale of the fool_  
 _The arranger of disorder_  
 _With your strange and simple rules_  
 _Yes now I've met me another spinner_  
 _Of strange and gauzy threads_  
 _With a long and slender body  
_ _And a bump upon the head_

 

So maybe it’s natural.

When someone knows you so deep you can’t hide from yourself.

You can’t run away from yourself.

You can only run towards them.

You curl him close and he kisses you for the first time and it’s not perfect. You aren’t two puzzle pieces fitting together. It doesn’t cure you; doesn’t make your heart sing. It breaks you down a little more but that’s still okay because he gets it.

His fingers are long and there’s callouses on them, rough and sure from spinning knobs in the lab. It matches yours from sharp bow strings, but yours are hidden. Bandaged. Invisible. You compare them in your head but you don’t let him see.

You still think he knows.

*

 _Oh, hold me like a baby_  
 _That will not fall asleep_  
 _Curl me up inside you  
_ _And let me hear you through the heat_

 

This side of him is different. Sometimes it’s too different, like when he’s staring down at you and you’re a little kid again. Tiny and insignificant and you can almost imagine whisky on his breath even though there isn’t any. Never would be because he knows that pain, too.

It's dangerous when Bruce is green, but not because of that.

It scares you when you fall, one hand flying back to an arrow you can never reach in time, legs pinwheeling out, ground rushing nearer, and you think for just a second that maybe it’s better not to catch yourself.

He catches you anyway.

His hands are broad and warm and you think _be careful_ because you can’t be replaced so easily.

But you know he’ll never break you.

He doesn’t let you go even though you can hear bullets pinging off his back, spraying out like water from a hose. Cool on a hot summer’s day. He doesn’t wince but you know that it hurts him. He curls up around you and his eyes are so green you are lost in the forest and he just growls, “Safe.”

You agree.

*

 _With a long and slender body_  
 _And the sweetest softest hands_  
 _And we'll blow away forever soon_  
 _And go on to different lands_  
 _And please do not ever look for me_  
 _But with me you will stay_  
 _And you will hear yourself in song  
_ _Blowing by one day_

 

The earth spins once more around the sun and you awaken feeling refreshed and whole again, but when you roll over the pillow beside you is cold. Blank.

There’s a mug half-empty on the counter. You drink it even though its long grown cold. You imagine him sipping it with his brow wrinkled in contemplation, thoughtful as he considers leaving you forever.

When the mug is empty you let it fall to the ground.

You don’t read the note he left, folded into a little square and tucked under the mug. You don’t have to.

You understand.

Your head is empty, but maybe you’ll pick up your old friendship with insomnia.

After all,

You can’t be replaced.

 

 _Oh, hold me like a baby_  
 _That will not fall asleep_  
 _Curl me up inside you  
_ _And let me hear you through the heat_

**Author's Note:**

> I've always thought Suzanne Vega's "Gypsy" is Clint and Bruce's song. Then [this](http://slowdancingangels.tumblr.com/post/101647038920/roshytsunami-alt-j-mayallyourbaconsburn) popped up on Tumblr and it all clicked together.


End file.
